Tony LaHood’s painful story of getting only a $2,700 offer for his beautiful but damaged Mercedes reminded me of a somewhat similar but yet quite different tale from the Niedermeyer chronicles. OK, from the title, you’re probably assuming the now-commonplace: exaggerated personal injury claims for whiplash, PTSD, lost income, etc… Actually, no; in fact, that never occurred to us at the time, even though Stephanie was pregnant when we got rear-ended. More like something to do with driving an unusual car.

In the spring of 1979, I paid $75 for a 1970 Peugeot 404 wagon. (The price reflected the condition of its water-logged, rusted-solid engine, the victim of a blown head gasket.) I found a good, $50 motor at my favorite Francophile junkyard, then gave the oxidized dark green paint a good polishing, and the car looked exactly like the one above. Since Stephanie needed an automatic, it became her car; in fact, it was the car in which she learned to drive when she was among the very few Los Angeles adults without a driver’s license.

On the fourth of July, we were driving back to Santa Monica on the I-10 just as fireworks started going off at the pier, when a driver just ahead of us hit the brakes too hard. I reacted quickly enough to avoid plowing into the car ahead of me, but then the car behind us slammed our car into the one ahead of us. Nobody was hurt, although it was a pretty good jolt. Oddly, the 404’s delicate-looking rear bumper and rear end were almost unscathed, but the front grille, one front fender, the headlights, etc., were all pretty well damaged.

The driver behind me took responsibility, and I got hold of his insurance agent. “A 1970 Peugeot 404? Never heard of it.” He couldn’t find any information to determine either the car’s value or the cost of the damage (which seems a bit odd, eh?). I told him it was a “French Mercedes” and “The World’s Greatest Wagon”, and my pampered pride and joy. So what to do?

He told me to get estimates for parts and labor, and so I did, getting prices of all the body parts (shipped from France) from the the little Peugeot dealer right on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. And then I went to an exotic-car body shop to get an estimate for the labor. The total bill was $2,600 ($8,000 adjusted). I submitted it, knowing that no one in their right mind would pay more than half that for a 10-year old 404 wagon back then.

Somehow, I got that guy on the phone to sign off on it without any reduction. That was the first little windfall chunk of cash I’d ever made up to that point. I spent thirty bucks of it at the junkyard, where I stripped a wrecked 404 of all the necessary body parts, and paid a guy I knew $150 to pull out the front-end substructure and put it all together again.

Unfortunately, the donor car was white, so after a visit to Earl Scheib we ended up with a gunmetal gray 404 wagon, a choice I regretted later (I had a this silvery-gray in mind, but that’s not quite how Earl realized it). Oh, well; I was still some $2,200 ahead on the deal, and we used some of that for a trip to Austria. And then about a year or so later, we sold the wagon for about $1,000. A good little earner, that Peugeot was.

I went out to examine, it was not even dented. More of a paint burn from the friction, barely noticeable at all. I took the car for an estimate (after finding a shop that could paint a non-clearcoat car) and got an estimate of somewhere over $2,000. The other driver was insured, and her company paid me just like in your case. It was a nice car, and i made a nomination to the finance committee (consisting solely of Mrs. JPC) to fix the car, but my nomination did not carry enough votes. I wish I could remember what we spent the money on. It was not Europe. Probably school tuition.

This reminds me of my first car, a 65 Galaxie 4 dr HT, bought in 1973, for $ 221. In the next two weeks, a $ 3 dollar Bendix drive, a headlight, and a tailpipe made the car drivable. Then, a 16 year old boy crashed into it parked in front of my parents’ home.

After an initial offer of $ 100 from the father’s insurance agent, I told the agent that a 67 booked for $ 775, and a 66 booked for $575. There was no book value for the 65, so after showing the guy the purchase papers and the repair bills, I said that I would take $ 375 for the car, for the year difference. I argued that my car was parked when hit, and why should I take $ 100 for a car that I just bought and repaired. Other than that, find me another car like it.

He wrote me out a check for the $ 375. I made about $ 100 on the deal. It was the only car I made a profit on in 40 years.

My best deal was a 1988 Plymouth Sundance. Bought for $900 on a Friday and parked it in front of my house on the street. Hit on Monday afternoon, pushed over one house length into another car parked on the street. Insurance said the car wasn’t worth fixing and they would make me an offer. $2750 offer came two days later. I couldn’t wait to send them the title and keys.

Only insurance “totaling” of a car in my life has to do with car theft of my beloved 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Brougham. Stolen from my Southfield, MI appartment parking lot on on Thanksgiving weekend in 2001. Recovered 28 days later completely stripped and lying in an alley somewhere in Detroit.

The car had 150,000+ miles on it, the front frame had rusted to the point were the swaybar had broken loose of the drivers side mount, and the lightweight “metric” transmission was starting to go. Honestly the car was likely worth about $1000 to a used car lot but lucky me the insurance payout was $1500 which was used as a downpayment on a 1997 Ford Escort wagon. My exwife is still driving that car.

A friend of mine had a ’72-ish Matador that needed a lot more than just a rear bumper. So he grafted a yellow stepside Ford pickup bed onto the back of the white AMC, and the “MataFord” was born. I wish I had a picture ….

I had a 94 Ford Taurus SHO. The car had become a classic Ford heap, nothing worked right, didn’t run right, etc. Tried to pretty much give it away via a SHO enthusiast website, not a single nibble was found.

Fortunately for me, a huge oak tree fell on it and T-boned it. Insurance gave us 3k for it, worked out nicely.